Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Barilla Pasta, Oral Sex and Federico Fellini!

GIven the PR mess created by Guido Barilla, the CEO of Barilla Pasta with the broadcasting of his bigoted opinions about Lesbian and Gay couples it would be understandable if you thought he was a prude. You might be right. But remember, this is Italy, and looking back at the history of advertising for Barilla Pasta you'll be surprised to discover they made a TV commercial directed by Federico Fellini — centered around a joke about oral sex. Heterosexual oral sex, but still....

Obviously, since Fellini died in 1993, it must have been Guido Barilla's father (or grandfather) who had a more casual attitude about sexuality. But I think it would be good for Guido Barilla to learn from his elders and be more playful and relaxed.

Made in 1984, the spot is hardly an example of Fellini's best work as either a filmmaker or writer/director of TV commercials (yes, he wrote the spot as well as directed it). The spot opens on a couple in a very expensive restaurant. They are being sexually flirtatious with each other as the head waiter explains the menu to them. The woman requests rigatoni, which is used in Itlalian slang to refer to oral sex. And the response from the wait staff is that it will certainly stay al dente, or, uh, hard.

My suggestion to Mr. Barilla is that he remake this commercial — with a gay male couple. And then find the right pasta metaphor for a lesbian couple and make that too.

And yes, here's the spot:

 

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Barilla Chairman Comes Out As A Raging Homophobe, Urges Gays To Eat Another Pasta

Choc Tease: Women with (malt) balls make this TV commercial one of the U.K.'s faves and a queer hit.

<p>It's always nice to see two men cuddling together on the couch with a gay kiss (even if it is unconscious smooching). Even if, from my point of view it's not naughty or new. But as a TV spot for candy? Sweet. My thank yous to Johnny in Rhode Island for catching this on the list of top 10 best-liked TV ads in Britain:

Men who know how to play with it.

The men behind Butch Bakery have a post-gay sense of humor. With products described as" Masculine styled cupcakes for the guys (and the guys/girls who love em!)" and a website that makes fun of frilly pink frosted cupcakes in a way that doesn't feel like coded queer bashing but in fact is laughing at homophobia and misogyny while at the same time introducing a whole new kind of cupcake experience that clearly can be said to have a masculine aesthetic. Kudos to founder David Arrick and to ad agency readybreak in New York for creating a print campaign that truly made me laugh out loud. 

Substituting Homoeroticism For Health Claims: The New POM Wonderful Advertising

Actor Erik Fellows wanders through the desert without a care how the sun will damage his skin. Why? Because he has the anti oxidant power of POM Wonderful. Ahem.

Okay, let me say I have been a customer. I actually seed pomegranates every week and put them on my cereal (along with blueberries). I drink pomegranate juice. I do this because there is anecdotal evidence for prostate health. However, last week the FTC finally woke up to its responsibilities and came down on POM for what they said were unsubstantiated claims. And heaven knows, POM does do its best to have people believe that their product will help protect men from prostate cancer. That it's 40% as effective as Viagra. Well, I think Erik Fellows on my TV screen (or anywhere in my home) would obviate the need for Viagra.

Now that POM is having trouble with their health claims, they've created some videos that get to the sexual potency claims without saying anything directly. Though in one ad they allude to the fruit's mythical status as an aphrodisiac. They also allude to the claims they can't make by saying "backed by modern science," but they don't say what claim is being backed up. This is classic weasel wording.

When I first started as a copywriter, I remember working on Cascade dish detergent. You know, it gets dishes VIRTUALLY spotless. Not spotless, virtually spotless. Almost. Because they can't make the full claim legally. UNSURPASSED is another weasel work: it means that the product being sold is equal to the competition — it's a parity product. The POM videos are beautiful examples of weasel wording.

These videos are beautifully shot. They use mythic imagery and eroticism to make the emotional association to the claims they can no longer say legally. And I suspect if POM had introduced their product with these video spots they would have become award winners, and given POM a classy image. They may yet do so. The spots certainly have what it takes to win some awards. 

But nowadays, I get Marco Polo brand pomegranate juice. It costs a lot less, and isn't as sweet. And I know that unlike Persephone, even though I consume hundreds of pomegranate seeds in a week, I'm no prisoner of Hades.

You can see the full POM ad below, and you can read about the FTC complaint against POM here.

Music, memory, Match boxes and coffee: An appreciation of Tokyo's La Scala-za Café

While rummaging through a drawer recently I came across a box of matches I’d been saving since 1987. It was from La Scala-za, a café in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, and one of the most memorable café’s in Tokyo at a time when these businesses thrived on competition to be the most individual, eccentric and creative (all the more astounding in a culture that denied this urge in the citizenry).

What made La Scala-za an experience was visible even  before you entered: vines clung to walls that looked as though they were built of stone. There was a turret, and the roof along the side street was crenellated.  There was a tall and narrow stained glass window in front that ran from the first through third floors. The effect was of a decrepit castle. 

Inside there were overdone crystal chandeliers, curiosity cabinets filled with odd knick knacks, a suit of armor standing in a stairwell, and antimacassars on the red velvet chairs. Today’s Goths would feel totally at home there, or perhaps today’s vampire fans. However, I think the intention was to capture the 19th Romantic European sense of beauty. And in fact, the decorative metalwork in front of the second floor window looks like the image on their match-box cover.  

When you consider that the place opened in 1954, only two years after the end of Japan’s occupation by the Allied Powers, in an only partially rebuilt Tokyo where, La Scala-za must have stood as a monument to a fantasy escape from the privations of post-war Japan. But that escape was only partially fueled by the architecture (and caffeine). No, what made La Scala-za so special, and what had people going there regularly was that they played Western classical music non-stop at a time when buying records must have also seemed an incredible luxury.

In fact, Scala-za published a schedule of what they would be playing in advance. A program of sorts. So if you wanted to come and hear Verdi, or Chopin (since it was not only opera, despite the name) you knew just when to show up. Though you couldn’t be guaranteed a seat, since regulars seemed to almost live there.

Students would be there hunched over books, smoking furiously and discussing important issues in art at politics. And young lovers made La Scala-za a meeting place for decorously romantic coffee dates.   I know, because my boyfriend Hiroshi took me there for the first time when we had just started going out in 1982. So finding that box of matches was a moment of romantic memories and nostalgia for Tokyo in the go-go 80s, so different a time from La Scala’s beginning.

The image on the match-box cover, a sort of 19^th Century Romeo and Juliet on the  balcony, with a dash of My Fair Lady meets Dracula, captures the recherché spirit of the place.

La Scala-za closed after a 48-year run on December 31^st,  2002, a victim of the real estate boom. People lined up outside to say goodbye. But recently, it has re-appeared in a new incarnation, though in the basement of a modern building and so without the feel of the old place.

This is the story of cities, and life. I remember going up 6th Avenue in Manhattan with my father when I was a boy and listening to him complain about how it had been ruined by all the new glass and steel buildings. Now, I can’t walk through the city without being surrounded by ghosts of people and places past.

Memories and impermanence. The evanescence of existence — the blossom falls. The beautiful sadness of things. So lets keep dancing. In this moment now — because really, that’s all there is Peggy.  

How hot are Bertolli Oven Baked Meals? When two sexy men kiss, it's really hot.

Yep, in this TV commercial for Bertolli (running exclusively on Logo) there's a sexy kiss planted on the cheek of the "hero" of the spot. The fantasy sequence is fun, and the reality our hero comes back to is even better. Three cheers for Bertolli and Unilever. I know whose pasta I'm purchasing.

Mr. Sub and Mr. Slave: Gay representation and homophobia in advertising?

I had never heard of the Canadian sandwich chain, Mr. Sub. But my first thought was a kind of teenaged snicker at the name, so reminiscent of the Mr. Slave character in South Park. Perhaps that’s why they felt the need to run the following ad — which led to complaints of homophobia and the ad agency that created the spot getting fired:


Do you think this was homophobic? Boston’s queer paper Edge noted that the spot was in some ways similar to a British commercial for Heinz that goes further than most American television in showing a butcher kissing his partner — another man who is leaving for his day of work at the office. That spot was pulled because the Brits are too homophobic to see such a thing. The Mr. Sub spot however, treats the “coming out” announcement at the family dinner, something that is most often fraught with fear, as a joke. And it not only makes light of the fears of any queer folk in coming out to the family, it makes light of a family’s response — since when it is a husband or wife with children, the emotional ramifications are nothing to be laughed at. There is real suffering all around. And that’s where I object to this spot — it makes light of emotional suffering of people, gay and straight. Adults and children.

When an agency does this, they think they’re being edgy. And in today’s market, agencies work hard to have their client’s message stand out, be heard, be talked about. Of course, you want this to be related to the product message, and in a good way. Creative people at agencies struggle with what is edgy and what is tasteless. I actually have some work in my portfolio that some people find completely tasteless and others love for what they say as an edgy yet relevant message. I often wonder if I should take that work out. So I understand this struggle from the inside of the business.

However, to fire the agency when in fact it was the client who gave the go ahead to make the spot is shifting blame where it doesn’t belong. An agency shows a client at least 3 storyboards for every commercial that actually gets made. With a large company like Mr. Sub all advertising goes through a corporate hierarchy of decision makers. It is certainly just as much the fault of the Chief Marketing Officer at Mr. Sub as it is anyone at the agency that this spot was made and ran. But of course, an agency is always the whipping boy when something goes wrong. Which makes the people who work at agencies the real masochists — Mr. Sub and Mr. Slave indeed!

Pretty boys and watersports...Dasani advertising from Argentina and water politics

The headline/slogan for this campaign for Dasani is Move Your Water. Clearly something is lost in translation — this must be good in Spanish, because in English the connotation is urination. And while some might consider the thought of watersports with the handsome fellow in this ad to be appealing, I don't think this is what Coca Cola had in mind.

Dasani, by the way, has got to be one of my least favorite water products out there. It's bad enough that we've lost public drinking fountains so that we have to pay to drink what used to be free — and we mess up the environment after drinking it. Even before actually. The fuel cost of shipping this water, the use of water to clean the plastic bottles before they are used, and then the cost to the environment in landfill is appalling. And all this for water that has been completely denatured. Completely stripped of the trace minerals you want.

Oh, it's true, public water sources now are frightening when you consider how much in the way of pharmaceutical runoff is coming out of our faucets. Who needs an anti-depressant? Have a glass of water.

The New York Times has been reporting recently on the despoiling of water sources in the U.S. It's an important story: "research shows that an estimated one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet a federal health benchmark in other ways. Those exposures include carcinogens in the tap water of major American cities and unsafe chemicals in drinking-water wells."

But industry gets a double bonus with this issue — they destroy our water and use it without paying for clean-up, and then they sell us water since we can't drink what they've messed up. Yup. Of course, some of the spring waters come from sources that are just as exposed to pollutants like agricultural pesticide runoff. So if you think you're doing better when you pay for water, many times you're not. The Environmental Working Group published a study last year showing that "10 popular brands of bottled water, purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in 9 states and the District of Columbia, contained 38 chemical pollutants altogether, with an average of 8 contaminants in each brand." And most of the plastic bottles contains PCBs, a known carcinogen that is released into the water when the temperature of the plastic rises or falls below a certain level. 

Even more amazing was the information that some of the bottled water brands were simply tap water: from public water sources you have access to for free. 

Mind you, there are some bottled waters out there that come in PCB free bottles (of course most of those bottles are glass, but not all). And some bottled waters are actually a good source of important minerals, helping to restore the pH balance of the body. But there aren't many of these, and of course, caveat emptor.

Yup. Ya gotta love the free-market economy and the rape of the environment brought to us by the last 8 years of the MBA President.

Really, you didn't think I was just gonna put up an ad with a sexy Argentine guy without getting on my soap box? Now excuse me, but I think I'll head downtown to Escuelita...

What's a "gentile bagel?"

The New York Times City Room column reported today about the Yom Kippur fast and what people did, where they shopped for break fast, etc. And one quote stood out for me:

"Mr. Jablonsky said H&H Bagels had only 'gentile bagels' by the time he made it through a long line to the counter"

So what's a gentile bagel? I mean, I've always referred to bagels that don't quite have the toothy hardness on the outside that a real bagel ought to as goyishe bagels — donut shaped and soft bread for people who can't deal with the authentic bite of a bagel. And I think of products like blueberry bagels as not authentic. Though once you get to cinnamon raisin, it's a slippery slope. And I have to say, I haven't like H&H bagels for years now, feeling that they have softened up to appeal to a generation not used to the tough chew a bagel requires.

So I am curious. What's an authentic bagel to you? What varieties are beyond the pale (which in fact any bagel in the US would be given the original meaning of that phrase)?

5770: The new year and the power of intention, individual and communal

This is the last calendar day of the Judaic calendar year 5769. Tonight, at sunsets around the world Jews will gather in synagogues and around dinner tables to mark the change and to examine their lives in the hope of change.

Change. A word we heard a lot of in the last year. We have the quadrennial change of presidents (or administrations) this year. And it has been a momentous societal change that has also brought up stiff resistance. The election of an African-American president has lanced the boil of racism in our country, and all the pus is spilling out. The poisonous thinking and beliefs held by many has become a daily part of the public lack of discourse. It took no less a moral force than former president Carter to name the elephant in the room. And today House speaker Pelosi talked about the violence that is born when this kind of talk is not merely condoned, but whipped up, by media clowns whose only responsibility is to their ratings.

Since the vast majority of these people are Christians, their communal review is generally around the secular new year. But I think of the words in the first blessing said every morning during the Shaharit service: “day after day You renew Creation.”

The celebration of the new year could be at any moment in any season. We have the communal celebrations of tradition that come down to us based on seasonal and agricultural reasons. Based on the position of the sun in relation to our orbit around it. The Jewish new year usually falls close to the autumn equinox. The Western secular new year falls close to the winter solstice. Both are moments of transition in our relationship to the light of day. Both remind us that time moves forward, that darkness falls and that light returns, in nature and for our planet at least. But clearly we can chose any time of the day or night, and any date on the calendar to review our lives.

As a (Buddhist) Jew, at this time of year I usually find myself in a synagogue reciting a prayer that takes responsibility — the communal confession of the Ashamnu and the Al Het. The prayer is not: “I lie, I steal…” but “We lie, we steal….” It is said with the understanding that as a community we are responsible for our words and our actions.

In my community, one of the phrases we say is “We are zealots for bad causes.” And we are all guilty of this at times.

This is certainly a time when the entire country would do well to do some self-examination.  Here though is the rub. True zealots don’t do this kind of self-examination. And this is the trap Jay Michaelson has fallen into in his recent essay in the Forward on losing his love for Israel.

Jay says that it is “exhausting to maintain my ambivalence.”  Zealots don’t face this kind of exhaustion. Their monomaniacal dedication to their cause energizes them around a single “truth.” But because Jay sees the multiple truths, and the insane zealots on the Israeli side, he loses his resolve.

I understand completely. But this is what happened to Hamlet. When faced with the opportunity to act, his doubts caused him to lose his resolve. And instead of avenging his father and killing his uncle cleanly, everyone ends up dead. As Arjuna stand before his cousins about to go to war with them, and has his doubts, understanding the full horror and moral ambiguity of the situation, Krishna schools him on taking action whole-heartedly.

I am not pretending that I am able to do this. I just recognize the peril of ambivalence.

I have seen how in our support for good causes we have come to mirror the faults of those we oppose. You can see this in Keith Olbermann, who is as guilty of simplification and manipulation of the facts as many on the right, he just happens to be on the side I agree with — I still find him annoying. And more tragically, we can see it in the way Israel betrays it's ideals by slowly becoming what it was founded in reaction against. But at the same time, to come back to the subject of the president and the racism spilling out across America, this is where I lose my patience with Obama. So it looks like he just stands there and takes the punches while the wing-nut right goes to town. He talks of bipartisanship in a city where one party has the knives out for him. It isn’t easy to do that. It is insanely reasonable (there’s a phrase for you). It’s, pardon the expression, Christian. 

It’s how he was able to go the Islamic nations and speak to their issues in ways anyone rarely speaks out (or can in their societies without fear of imprisonment or worse). And how he was able to tell Israel off on the subject of the settlements.

It’s how he was able to go to the black churches and say he supports lgbt rights while at the same time pushing back on the lgbt community, and pushing our buttons by embracing so-called religious figures we see as divisive if not simply outright hateful.

The thing that seems to give Obama his strength is just his ability to hold the tensions and see the ambiguities. He isn’t ambivalent in the face of these things. Psychologist Arnold Mindell has made a career of studying the ability to stand in this position and gain strength from it. He calls it Worldwork.

It’s a way of finding strength in admitting and opening to the individual and community failures, and committing listening deeply to the other. Listening to what’s under some of the insane words: the fears that aren’t spoken because they are more threatening, and speaking to them.

I won’t say Obama is a master of this at all. He enrages me much of the time, and disappoints me. And I worry that his insanely reasonable attitude will lose the next election. But at the same time, I have to admire his unwavering commitment to staying open. He said it in his recent speech to Congress when he offered to work with others who were willing to constructively work together even it meant compromise and conflict. He doesn’t shy from that. But he did say that he would move ahead without them if they weren’t willing to do the work.

He is the adult in the room. I don’t know what his spiritual path is. He spent time in a madrasah in Indonesia. He joined a church in Chicago. Like me, he may well be a boundary crosser. And I don’t know what his process of review and self-examination is. What I do know is that now is the time we in my traditional faith community spends in examination of ourselves as a community and individuals.  

I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have many of them. But I won’t let my misgivings over the real problems in Israel let me waver in my defense of it in the face of insane zealotry — both from within and without. Both against the haredi attacking the lgbt community and the surrounding countries attacking Israel’s right to exist. 

And in the meantime, I’ll spend the next ten days doing some of the spiritual work of the season, examining my intention, words and actions. But I have found the best season to do this work is always now. As the 10^th step of the 12 step tradition suggests: continue to take personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it.

I'm sure I've offended many with this. Well, that assumes many have read this, and have even read this far, and I know better. This is part of my own writing out of my internal struggle with these issues, in the hope that I can act with equanimity if not zealous certainty. I hope this challenges you to do your work. I welcome your comments, and of course...

May you all have a new year that is both sweet and free of high fructose corn syrup.